ales from outside their own
social group. This is shown by the Kamilaroi organisation, where "a
woman is married to a thousand miles of husbands."[370] This phrase
may be textually an exaggeration of actual fact, but it undoubtedly
expresses a condition of things which actually existed. Women in
Australian society must look outside their class, and in general
outside their totem, for their sexual mates, and they must expect to
be claimed as rightful sexual mates by men whom they have never seen
and who live at great distances. Carry this state of things but a few
steps back, and we must come to a condition of localised female groups
with males moving from group to group. Surely there is something more
here than savage organisation. The something more is the development
into a system of one of the results of the enforced migratory
conditions of early man, namely, the migratory instincts of the males
moving outside the female local groups and thus producing natural
exogamy. This is what appears to me to be clearly a distinct element
in the Australian system. But there is a new element in juxtaposition
with it. The new element is the organisation into marriage
classes--not every man from without, but only special men from
without, are allowed the sexual companionship.

Now in both these cases, where we have apparently penetrated to the
most primitive conditions, we are also brought up abruptly against
conditions which are not primitive, namely, the exogamous class system,
and we are bound to conclude that this class system thus shows itself
to be an intruding force which has not, however, been strong enough to
quite obliterate the older forces of hostile marriage-capture and
mother-right society.

Our next quest is therefore to find out, if we can, an explanation of
these two contrasted elements in Australian totemic society, and for
this purpose it is advisable to still further narrow down the range of
inquiry to one special section of the Australian peoples. For this
purpose I shall take the Arunta. There has been much controversy about
this people. Mr. Lang argues that the presence of exogamous classes
and male descent shows the Arunta to be more advanced than other
Australian peoples;[371] Messrs. Spencer and Gillen that the survival
of totem beliefs, which are local and unconnected with the class
system, proves them to be the least advanced. In this country Mr.
Hartland and Mr. Thomas side with Mr. Lang; Mr. Frazer